(The rear deck of the Marco Polo where Jones and Maureen would take refreshments.)
We have spent most of this week as we spent most of last, waiting for the arrival of the Portugal Telecom engineer, who has failed to turn up. Twice I have been into the PT office to implore the staff to expedite the repair but my implorations have been in vain. The engineer has remained elusive and we have (barely) survived a second week without a phone line or internet access.
The one useful feature of my visits to PT is that I have ascertained how to use the wifi facility that they now make available in their centres. One can at least catch up on the emails that one cannot access at home. The facility is being made available free for several months to clients of PT’s internet services. We have further noted that large wifi signs have been erected around the Forum Algarve shopping centre on the outskirts of Faro. It’s catching on. In-between times friends have been generous in allowing me the use of their home wifi.
I gathered that a local fellow was making use of a computer connect card to access the internet and arranged to meet him to hear how well it worked. I’m sorry to say that he wasn’t enthusiastic about its performance in this area. He reported that the signal was poor, downloads disappointingly slow and the connection unstable. Fifteen minutes down the road he got a great signal but not in Espargal. In the circumstances he didn’t recommend that I get one.
On Monday evening we went to the cinema to see Casino Royale. I was much impressed by Craig Daniel, the new Bond. He cuts an athletic figure and is much more convincing in the action scenes than most of his predecessors, especially the grandfatherly Roger Moore. In fact, I think he’s even better than Sean Connery. He brings all the necessary élan and sophistication to the part. Jones, however, did not think him particularly good looking (craggy, at best) nor did she like the movie’s graphic violence. You can’t please everyone.
Jones’s unused traveller’s cheques have been returned to the bank, where I took the opportunity of presenting the man who looks after our interests with a bottle of Christmas spirit. He in turn presented me with a diary and an imitation-leather cheque-book holder. He has been very attentive unlike the people at Barclays. The latter have not been able to find a way of insuring that our cash cards are not blocked again next time we go overseas. There is no facility for informing them in advance of such trips. We think this a very poor effort and have informed them accordingly.
What’s more, we recently received a letter from Barclays in Jersey informing us that we would in future be liable for an annual fee (for the privilege of allowing them to make money from our deposits) unless we kept a minimum of £2,000 in our account through-out the year. We wrote back asking them kindly to close the account. I hope that a few other clients do the same, not that it is likely to bother the bank unduly or to make a dent in its large profits. In my experience, banks are a bit like (some) cats – sleek, glossy, self-serving and liable to scratch. I hope that I do not offend any cat lovers.
During a visit to Loulé we arranged to meet Natasha at the office of an accountant who drew up an employment contract which, she hopes, will enable her to benefit from Portuguese Social Security. We didn’t have time to register it at the Finanças that day so I arranged to meet her at the Finanças later in the week. Great was my consternation when I arrived there to discover that the document I had carefully taken along was a similar-looking bank statement.
The dogs didn’t mind. They enjoyed the ride in the car and the leg-lifting opportunities at the adjacent park. They have become so fond of outings that, given the choice between a ride in the car and a walk, they choose to ride every time. Ono sits bolt upright in the centre of the back seat with his paws splayed out and peers unwaveringly through the windscreen. We often wonder what he thinks.
I have been in intermittent contact with our lawyers concerning our intended purchase of a plot of land contiguous with our own. This has been dragging on and was clearly not high on the lawyer’s priority list. He said the latest delay was caused by new legislation that required Barbara and me to petition the local council for some exemption in view of our being married in separation of property. I don’t pretend to understand it. (In Portugal, people get married in community of property.) Anyhow, it appears that we can circumvent this complication by buying the property in either my name or Barbara’s rather than jointly. We are hopeful (if not exactly confident) that the process may still be completed by Christmas. I shall be off to Canada shortly afterwards to see Mum and the family.
We have been in daily touch with (Barbara’s half-brother) Llewellyn and Lucia, who arrived in Lisbon from Cape Town at sparrows on Thursday. They are spending a week in the city before travelling down to the Algarve by train to be with us over Christmas. Llewellyn has impressed us by setting about learning Portuguese. He goes as far as reading novels in Portuguese, a step well beyond our own modest efforts at speaking the language.
He was due to fit a crown to a tooth he’d already prepared (and he did). However, I had been suffering pangs in another tooth for a week and asked him to take care of that at the same time. Regrettably, I have reached the stage where virtually any dental work is expensive. Most of my teeth have been mined for half a century to the point where there’s little left to play with. It’s all crowns and the like.
We have a friend who is close to retirement age and who confesses to having had only a single filling. Would that we had been similarly blessed. If I were able to order genes for my next incarnation, I would very much like to have black hair, an olive skin and faultless teeth. Good looks and a manly physique would be much appreciated as part of the package.
Jones has returned to her routine of taking both our dogs and the neighbour’s bitch (Serpa the spaniel) on afternoon walks. Sometimes I go along. At others, I load the tractor’s link box with stones from our fields and dump them on the side. The stones vary in size from golf ball to football. I estimate that in five to ten years, at the present rate, I should have all our fields cleared. oy them.Meanwhile, in spite of the stones, our beans are coming along nicely.
The woman who works at the local hardware store presented me with a rolled up calendar during my last visit. I asked her whether it had a beautiful girl on the cover. No, she smiled at me, adding that she did have some with beautiful girls if that was what I would prefer. I thought I’d better stick with the one she’d given me. I unrolled it to reveal a Christmas doggy with a bow – not exactly my taste if blandly inoffensive. Speaking of which – we have brought out our Christmas lights and arranged them in the shape of a tree upstairs on the patio railings and pergola. It is visible for miles around at night. Much as I have my doubts about the wisdom of having Christmas I quite like our tree.
Thank you to those correspondents from whom we have received Christmas letters. We greatly enjoy them.
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